Succeeding where Top Gear failed, Maserati teams with Bowers & Wilkins to make music with its car’s engine

Several years ago, James May of Top Gear attempted to re-record the opening theme of the show using only the sounds produced by car engines. The result was an absolute failure. Sounding less like music and more like the howlings of a broken Casio, May’s opus was laughable.

Maserati wasn’t deterred by the Top Gear musical mistake. Inspired by the seven notes Maserati engineers proudly boast that their engines produce, Maserati teamed up with high-end British audio company, Bowers & Wilkins, and recruited renowned music producer Howie B (best known for his work with U2 and Björk) to record the sounds of a Maserati engine. Their task; to make something wonderful from it. They aptly titled it “Seven Notes.”

After several months of planning and testing, Howie B was finally ready to record. Recorded in several distinctive studios and environments, the engine notes were taken back to infamous Abbey Road Studios and painstakingly mixed with instruments and vocals. The result is atmospheric and haunting and delightfully nothing like the Top Gear audio debacle.

Maserati, Bowers & Wilkins, and Howie B were so pleased with the result of making substantive, beautiful music inspired by the notes of an engine, they’ve decided to take the experience on a world tour.

If you’d like to listen to and download the “Seven Notes” tracks, watch the music video, and see the video behind the making of the project, visit the Seven Notes webpage.

While we find the music tracks inspired, given the limited vocal range of an internal combustion engine, should we to attend one of the Seven Notes concerts, we’d be going just to hear and see the car. No offense intended to Howie B, of course.